Dr. Oz has a goal with his new TV show. He wants to educate the public in a fun and informative way to get people living a healthier life. During the TCA event, he briefly spoke about some of the major health issues facing the public.
“Number 1 is blood pressure,” he said. “Because you know … plaque, if you put a fire hose on that and blast away on this, that plaque is going to rupture. It's going to destabilize it. That's why blood pressure is such a critical risk factor. It will strip ten years from your life if you're hypertensive.
“You want to have exercise, 30 minutes a day. It can come in many different forms. But what you really want to be able to do is assess whether the exercise is effective for you or not.
“You want a healthy diet that works for you, but you've got to love it or it doesn't matter.
“The biggest challenge we have, I think, in America now is not stress, but how we cope with it. Deep breathing is the foundation of mystic Christianity. It was written in the Torah. It's been written in most ancient religious practices. The wisdom religions all talk about the value of deep breathing because deep breathing sucks nitric oxide. Not nitrous oxide which is laughing gas, [but] nitric oxide from your sinuses down into your lungs. It opens them up and allows you to relax and suck lymphatics back. But you've got to know how to take a deep breath.” Dr. Oz demonstrated how to breathe deeply by breathing from deep in the abdomen instead of higher up in the chest.
Belly Fat is Dangerous
“Conventional diets don't work like most of the things we try to teach you that are based purely on willpower because they violate your biology. … But we always tell people to diet. It doesn't work … But you can nudge your biology a little bit in the right direction, but you've got to measure the right thing. The most important thing to realize, it's not about your weight. It's about your waist. You want your waist size to be less than one half your height.”
So if a person is six feet four inches, six times twelve is seventy two inches plus four is seventy six divided by two equals thirty eight inches. A 6’4” should have a waist size no larger than 38 inches.
“[The little pad of fat over the belly] is called the omentum, and it starts to get ponderously large as it expands. When I'm measuring belly weight, waist size, belly fat, I'm not interested in the fatness that's just beneath your skin. Fat thighs will cost you a couple dates, but they don't cause premature death from obesity. Belly fat does because that yellow pad of fat that puts pressure on your kidneys, causes high blood pressure, poisons your liver, causes high bad cholesterol, lousy cholesterol, and it also blocks insulin so you get diabetes. So without taking you back to first-year physiology, the basic reality is belly fat is responsible for most of the illness we face in this country. It's a simple message that we've got to get across. How do you do that? Simple tools, tools you can use.”
Eating the Right Foods
“If the food you are eating is nutritious for you then you will actually give your liver ammo to make proteins and immunoglobulins and all of the things that your body wants. But if you are eating fatty foods, your liver will turn to foie gras, and your liver becomes fatty."
Breakfast is important, but Dr. Oz stresses not to indulge in sugary food. “It's got to be fiber. Why? Because fiber slows the transit. It slams shut this break that exists in your small bowel so the food moves carefully and slowly, cautiously through your intestines so you don't get hungry again, so it becomes easy. Listen, fat people think thin people are lucky, don't they? And thin people think fat people are lazy lugs. The reality is that thin people do things naturally. They were brought up that way. They picked it up somewhere along the line. It makes it effortless. They don't even know they are doing it, like having fiber at breakfast. Another little trick you may try when you go home, always have nuts in your office. You don't have to refrigerate them. You can put them in your desk drawer. A handful of nuts a half an hour before you sit down at a meal will have dropped your adrenaline levels. Adrenaline is the hormone that makes your stomach growl, and when your adrenaline levels are high, you eat a lot of food. … So what you want to do is, a half an hour before you [eat a meal], grab those nuts, [eat them], and your adrenaline will fall comfortably and seamlessly."
“And finally muscle mass. Muscle mass is important because, when muscle is being used, it will burn 50 times more calories than fat will. … When you exercise, you need to generate a heart rate that's about 80 percent of the fastest heart rate you can generate. That number is 220 minus your age. So whatever your age is, subtract it from 220. That's the fastest your heart can beat. Eighty percent of that number is where you want to exercise it when you are going. And then, when you stop exercising, within two minutes, you want that number to drop by 60. That's how your heart is telling you it's healthy and capable of going further.”
During his show, Dr. Oz brings someone from the audience up on stage with him as his Assistant of the Day. This person helps him demonstrate various things, like how to breathe properly, how to compute waist to height measurements, and other important things that help people get and stay healthier.
The Dr. Oz Show airs weekdays. Check your local listings.
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